On a sun-dial

To carve out dials quaintly, point by point.

—Shakspeare

Horas non numero nisi serenas [I don't count the hours unless they’re tranquil]—is the motto of a sundial near Venice. There is a
softness and a harmony in the words and in the thought unparalleled. Of all conceits it
is surely the most classical. “I count only the hours that are serene.” What a bland and
care-dispelling feeling! How the shadows seem to fade on the dial-plate as the sky
lours, and time presents only a blank unless as its progress is marked by what is
joyous, and all that is not happy sinks into oblivion! What a fine lesson is conveyed to
the mind—to take no note of time but by its benefits, to watch only for the smiles and
neglect the frowns of fate, to compose our lives of bright and gentle moments, turning
away top the sunny side of things, and letting the rest slip from our imaginations,
unheeded or forgotten! How different from the common art of self-tormenting! For
myself, as I rode along the Brenta, while the sun shone hot upon its sluggish, slimy
waves, my sensations were far from comfortable; but the reading this inscription on the
side of a glaring wall in an instant restored me to myself; and still, whenever I think of or
repeat it, it has the power of wafting me into the region of pure and blissful abstraction.
I cannot help fancying it to be a legend of Popish superstition. Some monk of the dark
ages must have invented and bequeathed it to us, who, loitering in trim gardens and
watching the silent march of time, as his fruits ripened in the sun or his flowers scented
the balmy air, felt a mild languor pervade his senses, and having little to do or to care
for, determined (in imitation of his sun-dial) to efface that little from his thoughts or draw
a veil over it, making of his life one long dream of quiet! Horas non numero nisi serenas—he might repeat, when the heavens were overcast and the gathering storm scattered
the falling leaves, and turn to his books and wrap himself in his golden studies! Out of
some such mood of mind, indolent, elegant, thoughtful, this exquisite device (speaking
volumes) must have originated.

Of the several modes of counting time, that by the sun-dial is perhaps the most
apposite and striking, if not the most convenient or comprehensive. It does not obtrude
its observations, though it “morals on the time,” and, by its stationary character, forms a
contrast to the most fleeting of all essences. It stands sub dio [under the open sky]—under the marble air,
and there is some connection between the image of infinity and eternity. I should also
like to have a sun-flower growing near it with bees fluttering round.* It should be of iron
to denote duration, and have a dull, leaden look. I hate a sun-dial made of wood, which
is rather calculated to show the variations of the seasons, than the progress of time,
slow, silent, imperceptible, chequered with light and shade. If our hours were all
serene, we might probably take almost as little note of them, as the dial does of those
that are clouded. It is the shadow thrown across, that gives us warning of their flight.
Otherwise, our impressions would take the same undistinguishable hue; we should
scarce be conscious of our existence. Those who have had none of the cares of this
life to harass and disturb them, have been obliged to have recourse to the hopes and
fears of the next to vary the prospect before them. Most of the methods for measuring
the lapse of time have, I believe, been the contrivance of monks and religious recluses,
who, finding time hang heavy on their hands, were at some pains to see how they got
rid of it. The hour-glass is, I suspect, an older invention; and it is certainly the most
defective of all. Its creeping sands are not indeed an unapt emblem of the minute,
countless portions of our existence; and the manner in which they gradually slide
through the hollow glass and diminish in number till not a single one is left, also
illustrates the way in which our years slip from us by stealth: but as a mechanical
invention, it is rather a hindrance than a help, for it requires to have the time, of which it
pretends to count the precious moments, taken up in attention to itself, and in seeing
that when one end of the glass is empty, we turn it round, in order that we may go on
again, or else all our labour is lost, and we must wait for some other mode of
ascertaining the time before we can recover our reckoning and proceed as before. The
philosopher in his cell, the cottager at her spinning-wheel must, however, find an
invaluable acquisition in this “companion of the lonely hour,” as it has been called, which
not only serves to tell how the time goes, but to fill up its vacancies. What a treasure
must not the little box seem to hold, as if it were a sacred deposit of the very grains and
fleeting sands of life! What a business, in lieu of other more important avocations, to
see it out to the last sand, and then to renew the process again on the instant, that
there may not be the least flaw or error in the account! What a strong sense must be
brought home to the mind of the value and irrecoverable nature of the time that it fled;
what a thrilling, incessant consciousness of the slippery tenure by which we hold what
remains of it! Our very existence must seem crumbling to atoms, and running down
(without a miraculous reprieve) to the last fragment. “Dust to dust and ashes to ashes”
is a text that might be fairly inscribed on an hour-glass: it is ordinarily associated with
the scythe of Time and a Death’s-head, as a memento mori; and has, no doubt,
furnished many a tacit hint to the apprehensive and visionary enthusiast in favour of a
resurrection to another life!

*Is this a verbal fallacy? Or in the close, retired sheltered scene which I have imagined to myself, is not the sun-flower a natural accompaniment of the sun-dial?

The French give a different turn to things, less sombre and less edifying. A common
and also a very pleasing ornament to a clock, in Paris, is a figure of Time seated in a
boat which Cupid is rowing along, with the motto, L’Amour fait passer le Temps [love makes time pass]—which
the wits again have travestied into Le Temps fait passer l’Amour [time makes love pass]. All this is ingenious
and well; but it wants sentiment. I like a people who have something that they love and
something that they hate, and with whom everything is not alike a matter of indifference
or pour passer le temps. The French attach no importance to anything, except for the
moment; they are only thinking how they shall get rid of one sensation for another; all
their ideas are in transitu. Everything is detached, nothing is accumulated. It would be
a million of years before a Frenchman would think of the Horas non numero nisi
serenas. Its impassioned repose and ideal voluptuousness are as far from their breasts
as the poetry of that line in Shakspeare—“How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this
bank!” They never arrive at the classical—or the romantic. They blow the bubbles of
vanity, fashion, and pleasure; but they do not expand their perceptions into refinement,
or strengthen them into solidity. Where there is nothing fine in the groundwork of the
imagination, nothing fine in the superstructure can be produced. They are light, airy,
fanciful (to give them their due)—but when they attempt to be serious (beyond mere
good sense) they are either dull or extravagant. When the volatile salt has flown off,
nothing but a caput mortuum [lit.“death's head”; in alchemy, the leftover substance after a chemical reaction] remains. They have infinite crotchets and caprices with
their clocks and watches, which seem made for anything but to tell the hour—gold
repeaters, watches with metal covers, clocks with hands to count the seconds. There is
no escaping from quackery and impertinence, even in our attempts to calculate the
waste of time. The years gallop fast enough for me, without remarking every moment
as it flies; and further, I must say I dislike a watch (whether of French or English
manufacture) that comes to me like a footpad with its face muffled, and does not
present its clear, open aspect like a friend, and point with its finger to the time of day.
All this opening and shutting of dull, heavy cases (under pretence that the glass lid is
liable to be broken, or lets in the dust or air and obstructs the movements of the watch),
is not to husband time, but to give trouble. It is mere pomposity and self-importance,
like consulting a mysterious oracle that one carries about with one in one’s pocket,
instead of asking a common question of an acquaintance or companion. There are two
clocks which strike the hour in the room where I am. This I do not like. In the first
place, I do not want to be reminded twice how the time goes (it is like the second tap of
a saucy servant at your door when perhaps you have no wish to get up): in the next
place, it is starting a difference of opinion on the subject, and I am averse to every
appearance of wrangling and disputation. Time moves on the same, whatever disparity
there may be in our mode of keeping count of it, like true fame in spite of the cavils and
contradictions of the critics. I am no friend to repeating watches. The only pleasant
association I have with them is the account given by Rousseau of some French lady,
who sat up reading the New Eloise when it first came out, and ordering her maid to
sound the repeater, found it was too late to go to bed, and continued reading on till
morning. Yet how different is the interest excited by this story from the account which
Rousseau somewhere else gives of his sitting up with his father reading romances,
when a boy, till they were startled by the swallows twittering in their nests at daybreak,
and the father cried out, half angry and ashamed—“Allons, mon fils, je suit plus enfant
que toi!” In general, I have heard repeating watches sounding in stage-coaches at
night, when some fellow-traveller suddenly awaking and wondering what was the hour,
another has very deliberately taken out his watch, and pressing the spring, it has
counted out the time; each petty stroke acting like a sharp puncture on the ear, and
informing me of the dreary hours I had already passed, and of the more dreary ones I
had to wait till morning.

The great advantage, it is true, which clocks have over watches and other dumb
reckoners of time is, that for the most part they strike the hour—that they are as it were
the mouth-pieces of time; that they not only point it to the eye, but impress it on the ear;
that they “lend it both an understanding and a tongue.” Time thus speaks to us in an
audible and warning voice. Objects of sight are easily distinguished by the sense, and
suggest useful reflections to the mind; sounds, from their intermittent nature, and
perhaps other causes, appeal more to the imagination, and strike upon the heart. But
to do this, they must be unexpected and involuntary—there must be no trick in the case—they should not be squeezed out with a finger and a thumb; there should be nothing
optional, personal in their occurrence; they should be like stern, inflexible monitors, that
nothing can prevent from discharging their duty. Surely, if there is anything with which
we should not mix up our vanity and self-consequence, it is with Time, the most
independent of all things. All the sublimity, all the superstition that hang upon this
palpable mode of announcing its flight, are chiefly attached to this circumstance. Time
would lose its abstracted character, if we kept it like a curiosity or a jack-in-a-box: its
prophetic warnings would have no effect, if it obviously spoke only at our prompting like
a paltry ventriloquism. The clock that tells the coming, dreaded hour—the castle bell,
that “with its brazen throat and iron tongue, sounds one unto the drowsy ear of night”—the curfew, “swinging slow with sullen road” o’er wizard stream or fountain, are like a
voice from other worlds, big with unknown events. The last sound, which is still kept up
as an old custom in many parts of England, is a great favourite with me. I used to hear
it when a boy. It tells a tale of other times. The days that are past, the generations that
are gone, the tangled forest glades and hamlets brown of my native country, the
woodman’s art, the Norman warrior armed for the battle or in his festive hall, the
conqueror’s iron rule and peasant’s lamp extinguished, all start up at the clamorous
peal, and fill my mind with fear and wonder. I confess, nothing at present interests me
but what has been—the recollection of the impressions of my early life, or events long
past, of which only the dim traces remain in a mouldering ruin or half-obsolete custom.
That things should be that are now no more, creates in my mind the most unfeigned
astonishment. I cannot solve the mystery of the past, nor exhaust my pleasure in it.
The years, the generations to come, are nothing to me. We care no more about the
world in the year 2,300 than we do about one of the planets. We might as well make a
voyage to the moon as to think of stealing a march upon Time with impunity. De non
apparentibus et non existentibus eadem est ratio [things which do not appear are to be treated the same as those which do not exist]. Those who are to come after us and
push us from the stage seem like upstarts and pretenders, that may be said to exist in
vacuo [in isolation], we know not upon what, except as they are blown up with vanity and self-conceit by their patrons among the moderns. But the ancients are true and bonâ fide
people, to whom we are bound by aggregate knowledge and filial ties, and in whom,
seen by the mellow light of history, we feel our own existence doubled and our pride
consoled, as we ruminate on the vestiges of the past. The public in general, however,
do not carry this speculative indifference about the future to what is to happen to
themselves, or to the part they are to act in the busy scene. For my own part, I do; and
the only wish I can form, or that ever prompts the passing sigh, would be to live some of
my years over again—they would be those in which I enjoyed and suffered most!

The ticking of a clock in the night has nothing very interesting nor very alarming in it,
though superstition has magnified it into an omen. In a state of vigilance or debility, it
preys upon the spirits like the persecution of a teasing, pertinacious insect; and
haunting the imagination after it has ceased in reality, is converted into the death-watch. Time is rendered vast by contemplating its minute portions thus repeatedly and
painfully urged upon its attention, as the ocean in its immensity is composed of water-drops. A clock striking with a clear and silver sound is a great relief in such
circumstances, breaks the spell, and resembles a sylph-like and friendly spirit in the
room. Foreigners with all their tricks and contrivances upon clocks and time-pieces, are
strangers to the sound of village bells, though perhaps a people that can dance may
dispense with them. They impart a pensive, wayward pleasure to the mind, and are a
kind of chronology of happy events, often serious in the retrospect—births, marriages,
and so forth. Coleridge calls them “the poor man’s only music.” A village spire in
England peeping from its cluster of trees, is always associated in imagination with this
cheerful accompaniment, and may be expected to pour its joyous tidings on the gale.
In Catholic countries, you are stunned with the everlasting tolling of bells to prayers or
for the dead. In the Apennines, and other wild and mountainous districts of Italy, the
little chapel-bell with its simple tinkling sound has a romantic and charming effect. The
monks in former times appear to have taken a pride in the construction of bells as well
as churches; and some of those of the great cathedrals abroad (as at Cologne and
Rouen) may be fairly said to be hoarse with counting the flight of ages. The chimes in
Holland are a nuisance. They dance in the hours and the quarters. They leave no
respite to the imagination. Before one set has done ringing in your ears, another
begins. You do not know whether the hours move or stand still, go backwards or
forwards, so fantastical and perplexing are their accompaniments. Time is a more staid
personage, and not so full of gambols. It puts you in mind of a tune with variations, or
of an embroidered dress. Surely, nothing is more simple than Time. His march is
straightforward; but we should have leisure allowed us to look back upon the distance
we have come, and not be counting his steps every moment. Time in Holland is a
foolish old fellow with all the antics of a youth, who “goes to church in a coranto, and
lights his pipe in a cinque-pace.” The chimes with us, on the contrary, as they come in
every three or four hours, are like stages in the journey of the day. They give a fillip to
the lazy, creeping hours, and relieve the lassitude of country-places. At noon, their
desultory, trivial song is diffused through the hamlet with the odour of rashers of bacon;
at the close of day they send the toil-worn sleepers to their beds. Their discontinuance
would be a great loss to the thinking or unthinking public. Mr. Wordsworth has painted
their effect on the mind when he makes his friend Matthew, in a fit of inspired dotage,

Sing those witty rhymes
About the crazy old church-clock
And the bewilder’d chimes.

The tolling of the bell for deaths and executions is a fearful summons, though, as it
announces, not the advance of time but the approach of fate, it happily makes no part
of our subject. Otherwise, the “sound of the bell” for Macheath’s execution in the
“Beggars’ Opera,” or for that of the Conspirators in “Venice Preserved,” with the roll of the
drum at a soldier’s funeral, and a digression to that of my Uncle Toby, as it is so finely
described by Sterne, would furnish ample topics to descant upon. If I were a moralist, I
might disapprove the ringing in the new and ringing out the old year.

Why dance ye, mortals, o’er the grave of Time?

St. Paul’s bell tolls only for the death of our English kings, or a distinguished personage
or two, with long intervals between.*

*Rousseau has admirably described the effect of bells on the imagination in a passage in the Confessions, beginning “Le son des cloches m’a toujours singulièrement affecté,” &c.

Those who have no artificial means of ascertaining the progress of time, are in general
the most acute in discerning its immediate signs, and are most retentive of individual
dates. The mechanical aids to knowledge are not sharpeners of the wits. The
understanding of a savage is a kind of natural almanac, and more true in its
prognostication of the future. In his mind’s eye he sees what has happened or what is
likely to happen to him, “as in a map the voyager his course.” Those who read the times
and seasons in the aspect of the heavens and the configuration of the stars, who count
by moons and know when the sun rises and sets, are by no means ignorant of their
own affairs or of the common concatenation of events. People in such situations have
not their faculties distracted by any multiplicity of inquiries beyond what befalls
themselves, and the outward appearances that mark the change. There is, therefore, a
simplicity and clearness in the knowledge they possess, which often puzzles the more
learned. I am sometimes surprised at a shepherd-boy by the road-side, who sees
nothing but the earth and sky, asking me the time of day—he ought to know so much
better than any one how far the sun is above the horizon. I suppose he wants to ask a
question of a passenger, or to see if he has a watch. Robinson Crusoe lost his
reckoning in the monotony of his life and that bewildering dream of solitude, and was
fain to have recourse to the notches in a piece of wood. What a diary was his! And
how time must have spread its circuit round him, vast and pathless as the ocean!

For myself, I have never had a watch nor any other mode of keeping time in my
possession, nor ever wished to learn how time goes. It is a sign I have had little to do,
few avocations, few engagements. When I am in a town, I can hear the clock; and
when I am in the country, I can listen to the silence. What I like best is to lie whole
mornings on a sunny bank on Salisbury Plain, without any object before me, neither
knowing nor caring how time passes, and thus “with light-winged toys of feathered
Idleness” to melt down hours or moments. Perhaps some such thoughts as I have here
set down float before me like motes before my half-shut eyes, or some vivid image of
the past by forcible contrast rushes by me—“Diana and her fawn, and all the glories of
the antique world”; then I start away to prevent the iron from entering my soul, and let
fall some tears into that stream of time which separates me farther and farther from all I
once loved! At length I rouse myself from my reverie, and home to dinner, proud of
killing time with through, nay even without thinking. Somewhat of this idle humour I
inherit from my father, though he had not the same freedom from ennui, for he was not
a metaphysician; and there were stops and vacant intervals in his being which he did
not know how to fill up. He used in these cases, and as an obvious resource, carefully
to wind up his watch at night, and “with lack-lustre eye” more than once in the course of
the day look to see what o’clock it was. Yet he had nothing else in his character in
common with the elder Mr. Shandy. Were I to attempt a sketch of him, for my own or
the reader’s satisfaction, it would be after the following manner——But now I recollect I
have done something of the kind once before, and were I to resume the subject here,
some bat or owl of a critic, with spectacled gravity, might swear I had stolen the whole
of this Essay from myself—or (what is worse) from him! so I had better let it go as it is.

We are afraid to dwell upon the past, lest it should retard our future progress; the indulgence of ease is fatal to excellence; and to succeed in life, we lose the ends of being!

About

Quotidiana is an online anthology of "classical" essays, from antiquity to the early twentieth century. All essays and images are in the public domain. Commentaries are copyrighted, but may be used with proper attribution. Special thanks to the BYU College of Humanities and English Department for funding, and to Joey Franklin and Lara Burton, for tireless research assisting.